The contrast between the feel-good rhetoric favoured by our chief bureaucrat, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, and the realities of life and business in Hong Kong could scarcely have been more stark last week.
Do not imagine that Beijing will do what Hong Kong wants, even if the cost to itself is negligible. And do not imagine that all the talk of cross-border co-operation can overcome local vested interests and prejudices.
The 200-item wish list put forward as Hong Kong's way to capitalise on Beijing's five-year plan is remarkable partly for its platitudes; the 'win-win' nonsense by which Mr Tsang hopes both to show loyalty to the central government and to be doing things for Hong Kong. Many of the 'key initiatives' are demeaning, in different ways, to both Hong Kong and Beijing.
Most striking are the suggestions that the mainland should liberalise all kinds of financial services and capital movements specifically to benefit Hong Kong. But why should it, knowing that any such move will effectively apply globally - given Hong Kong's open system? It is demeaning to suggest that Hong Kong needs special favours to develop its financial services. And it is insulting to demand that Beijing pursue liberalisation at a pace which its leaders clearly do not believe is in the national interest.
Mr Tsang the poodle again presents himself like a supplicant at the Forbidden City seeking special favours from the emperor. Instead, he should be focusing on the issues that would enable Hong Kong to develop its core international trade, commerce and finance business in accord with its separate economic status and separate membership of the World Trade Organisation and similar bodies.
Rather than crowing about mainland links, Hong Kong should be wondering why it is losing, at least according to DHL and Japan Airlines, its business links to northeast Asia.
The proposal for a 'brand Hong Kong' campaign is so silly as to deserve some attention by the Kazakh 'journalist', Borat. Hong Kong already has a brand identity which it is in danger of losing thanks to efforts to get closer to the motherland by looking more like Shenzhen.